Rachel Dolezal steps down as local NAACP president amid race controversy

NAACP President's parents outed her as white last week

Rachel Dolezal has resigned her post as president of the Spokane, Washington chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People after she was outed by her parents last week for being white.

Ms Dolezal’s parents claimed that she had been passing herself off as African-American and was in fact born Caucasian. She has black siblings, who were adopted, the parents added.

The NAACP had not rushed to judgement on the issue, saying that race was not a disqualifying factor for leadership in the organization.

“It is with complete allegiance to the cause of racial and social justice and the NAACP that I step aside from the Presidency and pass the baton to my Vice President, Naima Quarles-Burnley,” Ms Dolezal wrote in her resignation letter that was posted on Facebook.

Dear Executive Committee and NAACP Members, It is a true honor to serve in the racial and social justice movement here...

Posted by Spokane NAACP on Monday, 15 June 2015

Prior to her resignation as local president, Ms Dolezal had canceled an NAACP meeting in which she was set to discuss her parents' revelation.

Over the weekend, one of her adopted brothers said that she had asked him not to reveal that she is white.

"She took me aside and just told me not to blow her cover," Ezra Dolezal, one of her African American adopted siblings, told KREM-TV. "She's like trying to say like people were racist to her her entire life, even though she grew up a white, privileged person up in Montana."

 

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